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Environmentally Friendly Material:

Vanity Calgary's cabinets are made from solid rubber wood. The rubber wood is known mostly for its attributes as an "environmentally friendly" wood obtained from trees that have been cut down at the end of their latex-producing cycle. Despite the name, rubber wood does not bounce or stretch. The name is a reference to the parent tree "hevea brasiliensis", also called the rubber tree or para rubber tree. In addition to being beautiful, rubber wood is also an ecologically sustainable timber making it popular with people who are concerned about the health of the world's forests.

Many companies which focus on high quality and unusual furniture use rubber wood in their products. It may also be labeled as parawood, to disassociate it from images of rubber. Consumers can recognize our cabinets by the density and tight grain of the rubber wood material we use. Rubber wood furnishings are very solid, with a smooth, even look which most people associate with high quality. The wood is sometimes compared to teak, another close grained tropical wood, and some people prefer rubber wood to teak since teak is not always a sustainable choice. Because we use only high quality wood, which does not have many knots, our cabinets have smoother overall look and finish.

What is Rubber Wood?

Rubber wood is a hardwood from the ample family of woods.

Rubber wood has very little tendancy to warp or crack.

Rubber wood is eco-friendly!

Rubberwood is often the most misunderstood species of wood in the furniture industry. The name rubber wood invokes a variety of misconceptions as to its features and to it's durability. Rubber wood (also called parawood in Thailand) is the standard common name for the timber of hevea brasiliensis.

In fact, rubber wood is one of the more durable lumbers used in the manufacturing of today's home furnishings. As a member of the maple family, rubber wood has a dense grain character that is easily controlled in the kiln drying process. Rubber wood has very little shrinkage making it one of the more stable construction materials availabe for furniture manufacturing.

Like maple, rubber wood is a sap producing species. In the case of maple, it is sap; in the case of rubber wood, it is latex. Rubber wood produces all the latex used in the world for all rubber based products.

There is one more important feature of rubber wood that is very important in today's world. Rubber wood is the most ecologically "friendly" lumber used in today's furniture industry. After the economic life of the rubber tree, which is generally 26-30 years, the latex yields become extremely low and the planters then fell the rubber trees and plant new ones. So, unlike other woods that are cut down for the sole purpose of producing furniture, rubberwood is used only after it completes it's latex producing cycle and dies. This wood is therefore eco-friendly in the sense that we are now using what was going as waste. Do not mistake the name rubber wood when it comes to its quality features.

Properties of rubber wood:

Density (kg/M3 at 16% MC) --------------------------- 560-640

Tangential shrinkage coefficient (%) ----------------------- 1.2

Radical shrinkage coefficient (%) --------------------------- 0.8

Hardness (N) -------------------------------------------------- 4,350

Static bending, N/mm at 12% MC --------------------------- 66

Modulus of elasticity, N/mm at 12% MC --------------- 9,700

Source: FRIM, Malaysia

As can be seen, these properties compare well with those of conventional hardwoods. Thus we have the ideal substitute with the major difference that rbberwood is economical, more plentiful, and eco-friendly.

Accessories:

Hardware accessories usually include hinge, guide rail, towel bar, and handle and aluminum basket. Considering the special bathroom environment, we only use quality hardware accessories of famous brand, such as DTC, SK, BLUM. All hinges and guide rail are soft-closing. The coating is tested by salt spray for 150 hours (international standard is 96 hours) to make sure that the hardware will not get rusty.

Finishing:

Vanity Calgary's cabinets are painted with PE primer lacquer, and finished with PU lacquer, which are widely used in high-end quality solid wood furniture. We only apply environmentally friendly paint on our bathroom cabinets. The paint is characterized by high glossiness and high solidification. It can keep the furniture look new for a long time. Besides, PE and PU are naturally resistant to water, chemical products, ultraviolet light and temperature fluctuations. Furthermore, we have recently introduced much modernized painting line to our painting rooms: totally enclosed water-screen paint room and industrial infra-red ray surface coat painting room. This will help us assure the paint distributes evenly on the surface with very little color tolerance during mass production.

As one of the essential parts of the production, the painting includes several steps: two water-proof treatments, four primer coatings and three times of surface coating, making the cabinet suitable for the relatively high moisture bathroom environment.